I haven't been able to narrow down my shopping list enough and would like some help. Our 2010 Fit Sport is our family hauler/commuter car. Typical use is hauling our 1yr old kid to daycare & dad (that's me) & mom to work. That said, we're used to driving much sportier cars like my '98 Impreza RS and '04 STi. Shortly after getting the RS, I added a Cusco 22mm rear sway bar and I imported an STi v5 suspension from the UK and it transformed the suspension from "sporty" to a much more firm but quite well-balanced setup. For those of you who follow rally, I got to drive Patrick Richard's Impreza rally car with DMS 50mm suspension and my STi v5 setup was stiffer, better damped and felt overall much better than his (as set up for rally). The '04 STi feels stiff and decently sorted out but not AS good as the older car. Whatever.

The Fit feels pretty bobbly, leans a lot in corners, gets knocked around by wind and my wife and I agree we'd like to go with a firmer suspension, more like the STi if possible. That said, I'm not that interested in going much lower (already scrapes on our driveway if you don't angle it) and I definitely don't want to go so stiff that the car sucks to drive around town (remember: family car). When I read most threads in this forum, I see a lot of comments about things like wheel gap, stance, "handles like its on rails", etc. but I don't find much about a finely-tuned all-round setup that most agree is the way to go for a guy like me.

I've never had coil overs. I don't know if that's what I'm after. I doubt it. I think a standard strut/spring setup that's dialed in and even non-adjustable would suit me fine but I'm not afraid of coilovers if I can achieve my goals that way and don't have to fiddle with it once set.

So, if the ultimate setup is the Mugen, I'd appreciate someone who knows the Mugen vs. alternatives to break down its strengths and weaknesses. If it's something else, I'm open to all suggestions as long as you get where I'm coming from.

Thanks,

Joel

PS: I might jump in on the group buy from Tiger Tuning if those parts will help as well. I can't tell how much chassis stiffness is a major problem with such a soft stock suspension.

 

I really liked how my Swift springs turned the "bobbly" feel into a smooth, consistent ride. The car really bites into corners without the leaning feel the stock springs produce. The Swifts are engineered to work with the stock suspension to get the most out of what is an already well-designed, sporty ride.

I haven't started experimenting with the chassis bracing yet, but I do have the full set on order from Tiger (minus the rear sway because I already have the progress bar sitting in my basement waiting for installation). I'm *guessing* that firming up the chassis equally from front to back is going to transfer more energy into the suspension system, creating a firmer, even more consistent, handles-like-it's-on-rails ride. Then I plan on "tuning" the handling of the car, experimenting with different bracing combinations.

But back to my original point: Swift springs are pure goodness and actually worth paying the premium for.

 

x2 on the swift springs! the Tanabe GF210 are also pretty decent, but they might be a little more rough... both of these will lower the car by only an inch...

the sway bar reinforcement will probably give you the biggest improvement, it will cure some of the understeer! hurry the GB ends the 4th!!! this should be a big bang for the buck!

sorry but i don't recall any Mugen sussy?

 

x3 for swift. it will definitely be good for the situation you are describing.

 

I am another one that is sold on Swift springs... They are a little lower in the front than I need it to be but the ride and handling is just way to good to sacrifice by going the coil over route... I am thinking of getting stiffer rear shocks used on domestic GM products and Tokico D spec struts in the future but if I do the springs will stay. I just Pay Pal'd Tiger Tuning for the full amount. Hope the bars come close to doing what the Swift springs do.

 

Thanks for the responses guys. I remember reading good things about the Swift springs. I figured that a matched combo of dampers & springs would be even better than springs alone. I'd like to hear some comparisons between the Mugen setup and the Swift spring/stock shocks combo.

Years ago I had an '84 Dodge/Plymouth/Mitsubishi Colt Turbo and did a KYB (or maybe Tokico) strut/shock swap, keeping the stock springs, and the handling was an incredibly nice change. I've never installed springs alone w/stock dampers. I have a set of STi pinks I never installed and those are designed to go onto the stock struts. I believe that's what the JDM Spec-C runs and has quite amazing handling.

How about opinions between the Progress rear bar vs. the Cusco vs. the Tiger Tuning bar (I don't understand if the Tiger rear bar IS a sway bar & adds torsional stiffness or just reinforces the mounts FOR a sway bar).

While we're at it, anyone have a clean, bullet-proof solution to the crippled-looking rear track vs. fender lip issue? I'm afraid of picking up wheels w/a wrong offset & ending up w/rubbing. If I wasn't such a miser, I'd just go to a local shop and ask them to figure it all out for me. I'd happily take recommendations for 16-17" wheels that fit the Fit and cure this ridiculous look or even a spacer setup that's not too ghetto w/stock wheels.

BTW: I was the vehicle content QA lead on Forza Motorsport 3 and when the GE fit was produced for the game, I filed a bug stating the rear track was all screwed up. Oops. It was pretty accurate to the real thing. Ironic that I bought one anyway

 

I have read a lot of info on the way Swift goes about engineering their products and was and still am very impressed... They engineer their springs to complement the stock shocks and they really do it very well... They have lots of travel where most springs don't and end up with limited piston movement inside the shock, wearing it out... They also are much lighter in weight, reducing unsprung weight... I assume that you are saying the rear track appears to be to narrow and also mentioned wheels... I would suggest that you get lighter wheels with more offset instead of using spacers... Reducing rotating mass and more unsprung weight is going to make more of a difference in so many ways that it justifies the money spent unless you buy fashionably expensive boutique wheels... Take it kind of easy on offset though, it does create more of a load on axles and amplifies the effects of torque steer... I have no experience with a rear anti sway bar on my Fit.. I do know that the torsion beam rear suspension itself is an anti sway bar.. It is my opinion that if you are going to install an anti sway bar you should also install tires with softer stickier rubber compound or getting off the throttle too quickly in the middle of a high speed sweeper will result in the rear end breaking loose and swapping places with the front... Rear shocks from a 2002 Pontiac Sunfire fit my GD and heavy duty ones for it are dirt cheap and will stiffen the rear up with out trying to lift the inside wheel off of the ground like an anti sway bar.

 

Now how on earth did you figure that out? Was this a brandy-inspired epiphany?

You continually amaze me man.

 

Would you believe cranberry juices with a splash of grenadine and raw almonds... I think I'll have more of the same except with what little brandy is left in the bottle.

 

Very nice.. It's usually beer, whiskey or martini's for me! Vodka and Tequila on rare occasions. Never together of course.

That however I may have to try!

 

Usually if I drink anything here lately it is just Heineken and only three over a 2 or 3 hour period.. In the winter it was Makers Mark straight up with a water chaser in a tall glass.. I developed a special fondness for straight bourbon when blowing harp at open mike night at area blues venues after having my reeds get sticky with beer slobber and playing out of tune or not at all... Come to think of it though, I used to sit out on the deck at the lake i lived at on cold clear winter nights with a thermos of hot coffee a bottle of Perrier and a bottle of bourbon many year before that for no good reason.

 

The sway bars for the GE are reinforcements, because they don't replace it, they just add to it's stiffness... it makes the install super easy. So yes the TT adds torsional stifness. Having the progress RSB on my GD (only option for us i believe) i can say that the the torsion beam flexes a lot more than it appears!

So far, i have the RSB & GF210, and the car handles very very well, but my car does'nt actually oversteer by itself.

With my current setup the car still has a tendency to understeer but very close to neutral... (might be because of the lower drop in front, it puts more weigth on the nose)

 

The only problem I have with neutral handling is that instead of having to deal with one end of the car getting loose you have both ends to deal with at once and that puckers my a** hole like having mortar rounds dropping in all around me.. Neutral handling is great if your tires are sticky enough to eventually hook up before you have slid off of the road and much akin to driving on ice while praying for tire adhesion... With any sort of independent suspension you have to get pretty crazy to lift an inside wheel in a turn but with a stiff anti sway bar it is pretty common on tall short coupled sedans on a tight road course and that relieves you of half of the tire contact surface on the end that occurs on...Without a doubt the forward rake that results when using Swift Mach springs does shift weight forward to the front wheels and suspension and creates more neutral handling but alone without a rear anti sway bar understeer is still apparent but not nearly so much as with stock springs... I was behind a Fit that was setup for and was successfully driven in autocross competition.. We were cruising on a farm road with hills and sweeping curves and I could see his rear end slightly break loose while going over very slight bumps that I could hardly feel in my car and never broke loose on going 20 MPH faster.. I was on stock suspension then and stock size tires with 400 tread wear rating, he had stiff springs rear anti sway bar and 195-50-15 tires with ultra high performance tires rated 200 for tread wear. Another time I was behind JCrimson on a smooth concrete surfaced road with tighter curves this time with Swift springs and air shocks with the minimum recommended pressure.. I had rotated my tires and forgot to add pressure to the front and drop the rear pressure of the same tires so my car was a real mess... I used too much throttle too early while in a curve and nearly ate a curb when both ends broke loose as I lifted off of the throttle too quickly to correct for understeer... I feel pretty sure that I would have been calling for a wrecker if there had been a rear anti sway bar on my car that day.. JCrimson has to use much less tire pressure on his rear tires due more to weight reduction the rake on his road racer... I wonder what changes he will have to make when he has done the K motor swap.

 

As i said, the car still as a natural tendency to understeer, but a lot less than when the car was stock... Now i can make it oversteer if i want too though...

I'm not saying that i want my car to be neutral... i want it to switch from understeer to oversteer...

Hopefully, i should be able to achieve that this summer when i install my coilovers... I plan on lowering height close to my GF210 and add some camber on the front wheels (this is by no means for look... pls don't get me wrong) i will also be running softer springs in front vs rears...

I would love to be able to also corner balance my sussy to get the most out of it, but i don't know how i could access car scales...

 

Check out "Automobile Handling" on Wikipedia... There are many ways to dial in the kind of handling that you desire without changing out parts... It's pretty informative and covers a lot of things that affect the way a car handles... Just increasing or decreasing tire pressure or changing toe in or camber adjustments slightly as well as numerous other things can be done to give you exactly what you want... It also explains what conditions and situations will induce oversteer or understeer and much more.

 

Nice thanks, i already knew about most of the stuff on there, but it's always nice to find new sources! With my next setup, it should be easier to play with handling without having to compromise too much between track and DD... and i already have the coilovers

 

Regarding the lifting of a tire in hard cornering, keep in mind that grip is a function of the load on the tire & the coefficient of friction of the tire vs. surface. I'd argue that it doesn't make a lot of difference whether the tire is actually touching the ground or is picked up aka "dog peeing on a fire hydrant" due to stiff suspension and/or limited travel if the load on the tire is essentially zero. I've watched a lot of cars in autocross, some stock, some not, pick up an inside rear tire in hard cornering, especially while braking--it's pretty expected.

Of more concern to me is whether the combination of springs, dampers, sway bars, alignment, etc. keeps the tires planted to an uneven (e.g. real world) surface when they *are* loaded. Springs that are too stiff, unmatched damping, excess unsprung weight, incorrect camber, bad suspension design, etc. all factor in.

A comment about coilovers--I think these tend to get a bad reputation for being overly stiff, track-only, etc. for a reason I think is perhaps unfair--the springs that come with a coilover kit are typically too stiff for daily-driver duty. I rarely (ok, never) hear of a guy like me getting a crazy adjustable coilover setup actually swapping out the springs to something that is better optimized for daily use like a coil-over version of the Swift springs rather than a full-on track day setup. If I recall, the rates of the Apexi coilovers on group buy right now are about 2x the Swift springs. Of course they're going to ride like hell for a guy like me. I don't know of a reason why a coilover setup with appropriately-stiff springs & damping rates finely-tuned wouldn't be the best of all setups.

 

I have considered using Swift coil over springs to replace the springs that come with coil over damper kits but the dampers don't have as much travel as the stock spec struts and shocks as far as I know and it would be more money than I want to spend..You can reduce more unsprung cheaper by getting very light wheels like Enkei RPF1s.... I don't race but I do like to burn up back roads... What works well doing autocross just doesn't get it at 110 on a long curve with a surface that feels perfectly smooth at 55 but really isn't... In many ways autocross is more extreme but not in the same way as over steering off the road and into huge pine trees would be which is something that would likely happen to me if my car was set up for autocross...

 

If I have read this thread right, you guys are getting rid of the stock bobbling effect and getting a firmer, more sporty ride simply by using Swift springs with stock everything else.

I want that.

Let's have a link to the exact Swift springs, front and rear, that we are talking about here.

Thanks.

 

lol sorry... i guess i might have threadjacked a little with the coilover stuff... anyways, yeah the swifts have amazing reviews from everyone who tried them!